the continuing adventures of gabriel garcía márquez

one novel that’s not a künstlerroman is garcía márquez’s living to tell the tale because it’s not a novel—it’s a memoir. but who cares? what we really want to know is how did garcía márquez become garcía márquez? here’s the definitive answer:

Those who knew me when I was four say that I was pale and introverted, and spoke only to recount absurdities, but for the most part my stories were simple episodes from daily life that I made more attractive with fantastic details so that the adults would notice me. My best sources of inspiration were the conversations older people had in my presence because they thought I did not understand them, or the ones in intentional code in order to prevent my understanding them. Just the opposite was true: I soaked them up like a sponge, pulled them apart, rearranged them to make their origins disappear, and when I told them to the same people who had told the stories earlier, they were bewildered by the coincidence between what I said and what they were thinking.

At times I did not know what to do with my thoughts and I tried to hide them with rapid blinking. This happened so often that some rationalist in the family decided I should be seen by an eye doctor, who attributed my blinking to a problem with my tonsils and prescribed a syrup of iodized radish that worked very well to assuage the adults.

and this, i think, is the solution to how to become the next garcía márquez: iodized radish syrup.